


Almost Ready

by Desdimonda



Category: Warcraft - All Media Types, World of Warcraft, World of Warcraft - Various Authors
Genre: F/M, Feels, Gen, One Shot, Patch 7.3 trailer inspired, Pre-Argus, The Vindicaar
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-25
Updated: 2017-08-25
Packaged: 2018-12-19 14:31:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,620
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11899728
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Desdimonda/pseuds/Desdimonda
Summary: I got inspired to write this after watching the patch 7.3 trailer. Combining my love for Draenei - specifically Romuul, Boros and Divinius together and the impending journey to Argus aboard the Vindicaar, have some feelings. Have some headcanons about Romuul. Just, have some Draenei. <3





	Almost Ready

Romuul ran his fingers over the smooth, polished edge of the control panel at the peak of the bridge, overlooking the edge of the shattered  _Exodar_ ; over Azuremyst isle, where the sun was setting, the last fingers of light falling over a world they were going to leave behind in a matter of hours. Sooner, if he went to tell Velen the  _Vindicaar_  was near ready, now. All it took was his final word to ready the vessel, to fly.

But he stood, alone, staring out through the wide, windowed helm, and did nothing.

The shadow of Argus loomed above, casting its eerie glow over Azeroth. He could see it, even though he didn't look up. He could see it, when he closed his eyes; when he slept; in the reflection of the  _Vindicaar_  as he worked, tirelessly, endlessly; he could see it in her eyes, as he lay by her side, wondering if their next day, would be their last.

For it was all that consumed them now. It was all that mattered. The Legion had brought the fight to them, tirelessly, for millennia. Now, they were bringing it  _back_.

Were they ready? Romuul ran his fingers over the crystals arranged above the console, watching them light up beneath his touch. 

They had to be.

Romuul pulled off his monocle and rubbed his eyes, sore and tired. Sleep had eluded him lately. There wasn't time for such luxuries these days. He'd caught sporadic naps on the floor by his artificers as they worked; tucked in the corner of the _Vindicaar_ as he hid, unable to bear another question. He'd even managed to steal a morning or two with Divinius. But they hadn't so much as slept, as clung to every waking moment they had left together.

He tried to not be fatalistic, he truly did, but looking at what stood before them, his heart could not outweigh his head.

He turned his head to look up and at that what lay before them. Argus. Home. But was it really, anymore? No. It was a shattered husk. A remnant of it's beauty and splendor; an echo, whispered on the lips of the now Draenei, pieced together from memory.

> _“What was it like,” said Aysela as she drew her knife along the crystal’s edge, honing its shape for where it was meant to be. “Mac’Aree, Korkruun - the vast Antoran wilds.”_
> 
> _Romuul paused, lifting his head from the floor. He was lain, prone, at the foot of the bridge’s command terminal, installing the last of what it needed to work. There had been complications this morning that had near shattered half of the Vindicaar’s crystals. This needed his hand, and no others._
> 
> _“Surely you’ve asked others before, Aysela,” he said, nudging aside the hovering light by his head._
> 
> _“A few,” said the Vindicator, lifting the crystal up to the light, examining its edges. She may have been a warrior of the Light, now, but she had one of the most delicate hands Romuul knew. “Some of the others close off or give me platitudes. You know, the standard answers.” She paused, raising her hands, dramatically. “Mac’Aree - the jewel of Argus! Antoran wilds, so rich with life and green that you could barely comprehend.” She smirked, turning back to Romuul. “Bullshit.”_
> 
> _Romuul smiled as he pushed himself up, dusting the remnants of the floor off of his bare chest and rolled his shoulders as he sat before her, listening._
> 
> _“I tried to ask my brother, but you...you know he can barely put together a sentence since he left. The most I’ve heard him speak is in his sleep.” Aysela set down her blade and twisted the finely cut crystal between her fingers._
> 
> _“His work speaks for him,” said Romuul with a kind smile._
> 
> _“Yeah well, I wish he’d speak to me sometimes. I was but a baby when we left. He remembers our parents; our home; their lives. I wish-”_
> 
> _Romuul reached out and touched her arm, her words falling away._
> 
> _“Like anyone I want to say Mac’Aree was the jewel of Argus; that our cities were the envy of anything that we’ve seen here, Draeneor, the endless worlds we fled to and tried to make a life; that nothing else could compare to what we left behind; that it was the beginning and the end.”_
> 
> _He sighed, scratching at a healing wound on his chest from a falling railing._
> 
> _“But the Argus I remember was one I saw from my knees. I was no one great or good. I had no family to call my own. I lived beneath the eyes of those who were better than me. An orphan with no wealth, no virtue.”_
> 
> _Aysela set down the crystal carefully between their hooves, watching the way the light licked its edges._
> 
> _“Mac’Aree was not a jewel to me. It was somewhere I had to survive,” he said flicking a finger at the hovering light that had wandered closer to where it could feel his voice. “The wilds were a threat. Somewhere I was told I'd be cast out to, if I was caught stealing again. And Korkruun was where I ran to, where I fled, when I was.”_
> 
> _Aysela twirled the blade in her hand, her tail curling against her legs as she listened. “But...you became Grand Artificer. I've always known you as such.”_
> 
> _Romuul smiled. “I fled Argus on the Genedar because I was afraid - afraid of what my people were becoming and what fate might befall me if I stayed. For a moment I thought, it couldn't be any worse than this, could it? I was wrong.” Picking up the small crystal Aysela had been carving, Romuul turned it between his fingers. “When the world is ending, class, privilege, prestige, quickly mean nothing. I was able to flee with them - with Velen - with those who'd walked past me, unseeing. And with it, I made a life for myself. No body was wasted in our survival - young, old, man or woman.”_
> 
> _Aysela looked up. “You don't miss Argus?”_
> 
> _Romuul stayed silent for a long while, staring at the crystal in his hands. “It was never really mine to miss. I never had a place to fit. But I know where I'm from; I know what it means to those I love and I know without it, I wouldn't be here.” Romuul smiled, looking around at the Vindicaar, at his companions, at his fellow Artificers, at those who came to bring them food and drink; at the Anchorites who came to mend their sores and aches; at Jost who patrolled outside, his gleaming armour almost aglow itself from his faith. “And I quite like it here.”_

They had once held dreams of reclaiming Argus. Hundreds, thousands of years ago. As time slipped on, falling through their fingers like sand, it became distant - a dream of a dream. A husk, like Argus itself. But it had never really been Romuul’s dream, had it? So many lamented about returning to a home they had left behind.

But home, was here now. And home was what they were fighting for. To keep it. To save it. To live, once again, free from the endless crusade of the Legion, their claws, their watchful, cruel gaze.

“You've been standing there a while,” came Boros’s smooth, deep tones, carrying across the ship's empty helm.

“Growing bored in your old age, Boros?” Romuul said, not looking back as he heard the soft click of his friend's hooves across the floor.

“Restless,” he said, pausing at Romuul's side. “At least I haven't taken to staring at the sky, wistfully.”

He dipped his head, staring at the crystals still alight beneath his fingertips. Everything was ready. They had supplies. All he had to do was tell Velen.

“The end of the world is a funny thing,” said Romuul.

Boros laughed. “I don't plan on my world ending anytime soon.”

Romuul rested a hand on his friend's shoulder. “There was always little that you feared, brother.”

Boros turned. “And there was always something you did.” He held Romuul's hand, fingers slipping against calloused fingers. “What is it? Divinius could stand before Sargeras himself and he'd tremble.”

They both laughed, Romuul shaking his head.

“I fear little for her - apart from my worth of her love. No. I...I'm afraid to lose  _my_  home;  _my_  place in this world; all I've built, because we cannot stop looking  _back_.”

Boros nodded, heaving a small sigh. “We have to take the fight to them, now. That's all we have left.”

“I know. I know this. I'm just...afraid. I'm afraid that our people will act rash, impassioned and without thought when we step upon Argus once more. We're not going there to take it back. We're going there to end this.”

“And we will.”

Both turned to see Divinius, her proud, imposing presence softened by the delicate white robe she wore, hanging off her bared shoulders.

She reached Romuul's other side in a few purposeful strides, her arm curving around his back.

“You don't call Argus home anymore,” said Boros, glancing to Romuul.

He shook his head. “I learned long ago that home was more than a place.” He looked to Boros and then to Divinius, gazing into her bright, hopeful eyes. “And I built this ship not to go home, but to save it.”

Divinius ran her fingers up and down his spine as she closed her eyes, the whisper of a smile on her lips.

“We should tell the Prophet, we're ready,” said Boros, squeezing Romuul's hand.

“Soon,” he said, his arm around Divinius, tightening, his hand with Boros's, echoing it's touch. “Let me stay home, just a little longer.”


End file.
